Tommy Robredo lacked sleep as well as a coach, got locked in the player restaurant, and his practice partner was the water-cooler guy.
Circumstances in Hamburg weren't the best for Robredo, but they didn't prevent him from beating Radek Stepanek 6-1, 6-3, 6-3 for his first Masters title on Sunday, and setting himself up as one of the favorites for the French Open.
"That I won today does not mean I will win every match or win in Paris, but it does mean I am in good shape," said the Barcelona-based Robredo, a two-time French Open quarterfinalist.
Being the first Masters final of his career, Robredo slept poorly the night before his big match.
"I got up three times in the night," he said. "I wasn't thinking about the match but my body knew it was going to play the final and it was nervous."
Because all week he was slated for late matches, there was no one around to practice with Robredo. The ATP found him an unconventional sparring partner, with little experience.
"I finished the quarterfinals at midnight and I asked the guy from the ATP to find me somebody to warm up with me," Robredo said. ``That's how I got him. His name was Ollie. I asked him what he was doing here and he said he's the guy who puts the water bottles in the machine.''
But Robredo appreciated the help as well as the uncomplicated company.
Without a coach since recently splitting with Mariano Monachesi, Robredo said he'd been getting lonely.
Martina Hingis won her first title since coming out of retirement and said her three years away from the game helped propel her to victory.
Hingis beat 16th-seeded Dinara Safina 6-2, 7-5 in the final for the 41st title of her career, but first since winning in Tokyo more than four years ago.
After storming through the first set in 27 minutes and taking a 4-1 lead in the second, Hingis faced three break points that would have sent the second set to a tiebreaker before she gathered herself and served the match out.
"I lived a different life and experienced a lot of things, and that probably helps me today in those moments," Hingis said.
Hingis returned in January after nearly three years out of the game with foot and ankle injuries.
"If I could turn back time, of course I would have continued to play. But at that point it wasn't possible -- the pain and the operations," she said. "Right now I'm very happy that my health is as good as it is."
Meghann Shaughnessy of the US won her fourth career title, beating eighth-seeded Martina Sucha of Slovakia 6-2, 3-6, 6-3 on clay at the Grand Prix SAR.
The unseeded American was appearing in her eighth final and first since Memphis, Tennessee in February 2005.
After starting the year without a win in five straight tournaments, the former 11th-ranked player has won 14 of her last 20 matches.
Sucha hadn't won consecutive matches on tour this year before this week.
Defending champion Germany beat Italy 2-1 and Chile topped Spain 3-0 on the opening day of the World Team Cup.
Nicolas Kiefer of Germany fought off two set points before winning the opening set on his fifth set point, and then swept the final four games to beat Filippo Volandri 7-6 (10), 6-3.
A leg injury stopped Philipp Kohlschreiber's momentum after he recovered from dropping the second set to Davide Sanguinetti. After breaking the Italian twice to lead 3-0, Kohlschreiber called for medical help on his right leg. He then won only one of the next seven games as Sanguinetti went on to win 6-3, 3-6, 6-4.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier